So this is where I find myself.
Fourteen years of education, innumerable classes and a trove of self-help books later, and I am stuck even more so than before. I’ve been indoctrinated by every person I’ve ever met, regardless of their intention.
I am, for better or worse, a sponge--a sponge with an insatiable curiosity for whoever is speaking to me, whatsoever it is about, as well as how they got to thinking that way.
You can imagine my internal conflict at the messages I receive. Feminists like Beyoncé scream “love yourself” and encourage women to embrace their sexuality. Unfortunately, there’s a good chunk of women who do not find themselves to be sexy by nature. And then, to really twist the knife, those same gorgeous women get nose-jobs, tummy-tucks and Botox.
Conversely, screaming into Beyoncé’s porcelain face, there are feminists in the opposite camp who tell women to accept themselves the way they are. “Don’t change a thing.”
Standing in front of the mirror, cheetah-print tweezers in hand, I find myself on the front line of a decades-long dilemma: does "loving yourself" entail conforming to the beauty standards of the day (regardless of who sets them), or simply approving of your current state?
Am I doing myself a disservice by “loving myself” into a cavewoman-like state? Would it be kinder to myself to maintain even a semblance of basic aesthetic norms? Or would I be doing myself an even greater injustice by shaving myself bare, buying hundreds of dollars’ worth of designer makeup and contouring away my Arab nose?
I think so. And then the next day, I feel the opposite.
You see, yin and yang appear to be peaceful and harmonious, swirling around and into each other for all eternity. I, however, imagine they must be in a gnarly fight.
They are two sides of a whole, of everything in this universe. They are like conjoined twins with exaggeratedly disparate ideologies. I think humans, myself included, delude ourselves into thinking “yin” (the “good” one) can and should be isolated from its evil sister, “yang.”
They are the two aspects of me entrenched in a heated debate at any given moment, hurdling obscenities, memories and negations at the other endlessly: “Pluck that eyebrow hair. It's ugly.” “Well it’ll just grow back in a day or two, anyways, and there are so many others around it that I should pluck too. And I have a paper due tonight.” “But you cannot be seen like this!”
This it's the kind of terse, back-and-forth I envision yin and yang might have with each other. Moreover, this is my definition of life: a fight; a ceaseless, aimless, existential argument.
Whether you’re contesting yourself—wrestling with your own contrasting, aggressive dialogues—or debating someone else about the principal foundations of feminism, you are passing through each and every day in struggle.
Which is why I feel absolutely graced when, out of all the strife and tumult, I find myself miraculously at a thoughtless clearing. Here, I am able to step back, put the tweezers down and laugh at the pettiness of my conflict.
I don’t ever stay like this—serene—for long, because when turbulence ends, death is not far behind. Placidity is not our nature.
Nobody is ever truly satisfied with their satiety. Billionaires bore. Politicians pine. And of course, the lowliest long. These similarities—the unhappiness and dissatisfaction no matter where you are on the totem pole—epitomize what it means to be human. We always crave, yearn for better, and most importantly, we fight.
So the next time you’re embattled with yourself over whether to, say, pluck your eyebrows, take refuge in the infinite nature of friction and do whatever you decide to do with an ambivalent shrug.
